As it’s the start of a new year I thought it would be an ideal time to look back over the year just gone. I have used Google Trends to compare the number of searches during 2008 of various open source and proprietary network management tools.

Whilst search volume is an interesting metric for network management tools, it is not intended to be in any way indicative of the usefulness of a particular tool. If you want to choose a tool, start from your own requirements first and select a tool from that.

Open Source Network Management System Trends

First up is a comparison of the major open source network management systems. Nagios, as one of the oldest open source projects in network management, still has a huge community of users and, in spite of a number of very good competitors, appears to be holding its own.

MRTG during 2008 does show signs of continued decline. Hardly surprising given that a number of very capable competitors exist that are much easier to install and configure.

Zenoss, Hyperic and OpenNMS are all doing well, retaining substantial levels of searches with Zenoss retaining its early lead.

Open Source Network Management System Trend 2008

A Comparison of the Nagios Ecosystem

Nagios is a significant open source project in and of itself. In addition, it also has an ecosystem of tools built on top of it as well. There are three main nagios core tools: GroundWork Open Source, Centreon and OpsView.

I haven’t been able to use Groundwork Open Source because a comparison wouldn’t be valid given how many words it is made up of. Many people may well type in Groundwork instead of Groundwork Open Source even though you will get a lot of civil engineering related results.

Configuration is one area Nagios is not very user friendly to new users, relying upon editing configuration files for changes. Both Centreon and OpsView provide an improved configuration experience, reducing or completely removing the need to directly edit configuration files. Surprisingly both Centreon and OpsView receive substantially fewer searches than Nagios.

A Comparison of the Nagios Ecosystem 2008

Open vs Closed Network Management Systems

A comparison between a representative sample of both open source and proprietary tools shows an interesting trend.

Both NetIQ and OpenView are losing searches whilst the open tools are holding up well. Perhaps, money was tighter in 2008 due to the economic woes befalling many economies. OpenView has been particularly badly hit, being well down over the year as a whole.

Open vs Closed Network Management Systems 2008

Conclusion

The open source network management tools search volume has held up very well throughout 2008. The same cannot be said for either proprietary tools, OpenView and NetIQ. Both of the proprietary tools have seen their search volume fall. A recession started during 2008 in many countries worldwide. So, that people are searching less for expensive software tools, maybe isn’t that surprising. I doubt the Google Trends data could evidence a shift from proprietary to open source tools though, given the absence of an upshift in searches for open source tools.

Author: Jack Hughes

An experienced software engineer with 20+ years experience writing products for Microsoft Windows based operating systems as well as 12+ years experience hosting websites on Linux and Windows including e-commerce and CMS systems.
View all posts by Jack Hughes

Nice Post, Jack. Good to see that our numbers are jiving with your analysis. I think that all the open source management tools have a bright future and am not surprised to see the decline in the search numbers from the Big 4.

Indeed, great info. The $$$ tools, like Tivoli/CA/HP, are less attractive than the cheapie-freebies. The geeks love these freebies because it requires their “unique” skillz to operate, thus ensuring job security. Management is still left wanting though for the lack of understandable business-focused information. For this they have to go elsewhere and often into very expensive and complex lands: Qradar, Arcsight or logging tools (loglogic). Not exactly affordable for most SMB companies.

Hi Jack! Full disclosure: I’m a NetIQ employee and FOSS fanboy :). I did some tinkering and it looks like the keyphrase “network management” is in a decline as well: http://preview.tinyurl.com/8d2uwr (Google Trends) . I know NetIQ tries to position AppManager, their related product, as more of a “server monitoring” or “systems management” product. Anyway, you point out an interesting trend and it is good to see that the open source products are holding ground.

John – I used Google trends and included “NetView” and “Tivoli Monitoring” along with OpenView, Zenoss and OpenNMS. NetView has a very similar volume to OpenNMS – well below Zenoss which is well below OpenView. “Tivoli Monitoring” is well below the openNMS / NetView line but this may be because of the search criteria. Tried just Tivoli and it dwarfs everything else. Tried ITM which also dwarfs other stuff but obviously includes things other than IBM Tivoli Monitoring. Also tried ITNM and it didn’t even register on the scale.

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